


There are Wolves in the Night

by arrows (orphan_account)



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 08:05:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/847228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/arrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There are wolves, they would say. And there are stories about wolves and girls. Girls in red. All alone in the woods.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	There are Wolves in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from Black Widow The Name of the Rose #3. Comment if you like it!

Red. It's a fitting name, seeing as that's all anyone sees anywhere when she comes into town. Blood, anger, murder, seduction.

The big bad wolf sneaks into town one day. Nobody knows his name, but he takes away a little girl in a red hood and nobody sees her again for many years.

She grows and grows and is not little red anymore. They name her Red because she is so adept at spilling blood. The wolf, who she now knows as Ivan, gets potions from the witch in the woods that leave blank spaces in her mind.

Red gets flashes sometimes of what was in those empty spots: a name, Natalia, shouted in the dark as she's carried away. Bright red spilling from a man's throat and a laugh she thinks is hers.

She ignores these.

Every day they train her. She becomes the best they have, but not without trying. She claws her way to the top until her heart pounds against her chest and she needs someone else's ribcage just to keep it in.

They bring in a man with a missing arm and call him Winter. He doesn't remember his past any more than Red does, but he speaks with a strange accent and teaches her a new language. English, he calls it, but he has not come from England, like some she’s met who also speak the strange tongue, he's come from America. Red doesn't think she's been to America, and this makes him all the more exciting.

The wolf tells her she is seventeen and makes her kill a family.

…

Red has always needed someone to carry part of her heart, and she finds that in Winter. Stolen moments away from the ever-watching eyes; cold lips on warm ones and a cold arm on soft skin and sweat against sweat. She thinks he is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

...

Red dances. She's told she was a dancer, once, but the memories don't seem right. She dances anyways, her feet gliding smoothly with the crescendos and scales only in her head. Her feet bleed, most nights, but she wraps them in scratchy cloth and pretends they don't sting when she walks.

One day, Winter comes to her room while she dances. "Red?" He asks in English. She slips to the ground, startled, and looks up at him with wide eyes. He sits down next to her and takes a deep breath before speaking and she knows it must be something important.

"Listen to me, Red. Your name is Natalia Romanova. You need to remember this. I found a file, a book of names, our real names, who we were before the got to us--"

Natalia. The name is like knives in her skull and then the knives twist and she has never heard the name. "Before?" She sneers, but the voice is not her own, no, it sounds more like the wolf. "You were a goddamn sacrifice to the wolf, Winter, and you know damn well that there was no Before for any of us."

An emotion crosses his features, but she is no good with feelings so she doesn't know what it is. As soon as he leaves, Red drops to the floor and the world is black.

...

She wakes up and feels hot breath on her face and warm lips on hers and raises her hands slowly and grabs the person by the throat, pressing until they gasp for breath. She opens her eyes and it is Winter, and she kind of likes him so she slits his throat instead of choking him slowly. She holds him as he bleeds out on the floor, and listens to his last words. "They t-t-told me a kiss would w-wake..." His metal arm stops twitching and his eyes remain open, but they have a sheet of ice glazing them over and she knows he is gone.

Winter dies and Red feels no pain. Spring had to come eventually, right?

...

Natalia. Natalia. Natalia. Four days after Winter dies, and the name still won’t stop repeating in her head. She doesn’t know where it came from, but each time it is like somebody ripped a rib out of her chest.

Well, it doesn’t matter anyways; they’d told her ribs existed to protect the heart and she has no heart. Where there should be an organ pumping blood and emotion through Red, there is a black hole, and empty space, a nothing.

She doesn’t mind.

…

The wolf dies and she leaves the place full of odd-looking trees and cold rooms in favor of being alone.

And so she lives, a lone wolf, though she does not like to think of herself as such because the only wolf she’s ever known was Ivan, and he is dead.

Red takes money where she can get it; killing and blackmailing and negotiating with the drunkest and richest and worst. It seems pretty damn okay to her.

Until.

…

Scarlet lips and red hair and a red knee-length cloak (just dark enough to hide bloodstains) stand out against the dimly lit tavern. Red glides through with a fake smile on her face and a knife strapped on each thigh. She’s supposed to be taking out a rich man, and he’s right across the room and heading over and she grins and.

Then an all-too familiar man appears in his place and she stumbles back into the bar, her face turning paper-white. “Winter?” She says quietly, and her voice breaks and he just laughs and laughs, but it’s a merciless sound.

“Nice to see you again, Natalia.”

The knives in her mind aren’t quite as sharp as they were the last time he said that name, so she grinds her teeth and ignores it. “How?” She asks through the static echoing in her mind. A simple question.

“How? Oh, dear Natalia; did they not teach you to be sure your victim is dead before walking away?”

“You weren’t breathing.”

“And yet here I am.”

Red sighs and leans against the bar to steady herself. Clearly, it hadn’t worked; though now that she thinks about it she’s not sure why she killed him in the first place. A side effect, she supposes, of whatever made her black out in the first place. Killing a comrade was unlike her, usually.

They’re getting strange looks from those who’ve overheard their conversation, which makes sense, so she takes his hand and drags him outside.

She should apologize, she really should, but she will not give him the satisfaction.

“Yes, it seems you are.” The words hang as white smoke in the air between them for an eternity.

…

Two years later, they are back to how things were before he was dead and before she was empty.

The knives have gone away and he calls her Natalia now and it makes much more sense than Red ever did, and she calls him James because he is more summer than winter anyways.

 

They paint the town red together.

...

The townspeople call her a witch. They might not be entirely wrong.

Natalia finds herself faster and stronger than she should be. James theorizes that it's an effect of the potions that Ivan had given her from the witch, but she doesn't look for reasons - it makes her more efficient and she is happy with it.

...

Natalia is caught, one day, by the chief of the town. She kicks and screams and struggles but the man has a strong grip. She can't get away.

Fuck, that's hot, and she is placed on a pole and they start to set it on fire. The flames lick up towards her and oh, that burns, that can't be good, she is going to die and she prays to every god she's never believed in.

" _James!_ she shouts finally and the flames never reach her skin.

The woman breaks the ropes binding her, flees, away away away and to where she knows James will be hiding.

"Oh god, James, they almost -- I almost -- how did --" her words break and she falls into his lap, tears rolling down her face. The cool water feels good against where the fire had been centimeters away just a moment before.

"Sh, Natalia," he runs a metal hand through her hair and tells her nonsense words that she makes into comfort.

Then.

Nothing.

She opens her eyes and there is no blue eyes or cold steel arms with red stars, no comfortingly familiar features to calm her. A pillow lies beneath her head, not a lap. Natalia gets to her knees slowly, then stands, and her feet hardly hold her weight. She looks around frantically, like a lost bird who has fallen from the nest.

A mirror is on the wall and she glances into it, finding that her features are not as she remembered. Her face is narrower, her eyes dark and haunted with deep shadows all around. She looks... hollow.

Not to mention the burns criss-crossing her face.

"James?" She calls out weakly. "James?! James, please, are you there?"

No reply. With a second glance around the room, none of his things are there, no traces of him remain.

Her memories begin to blur together at the same time as her sight, because oh, he was never there, James never returned for her. He is dead, and it's her fault; she killed him, she killed her James, her beautiful Winter.

Something inside of her breaks then, right in two. She flees the empty cottage, running into the town. Good, there's still an angry group with pitchforked and such, those are always fun. A devilish grin replaces her emotionless frown and into the crowd she goes. A small child is stabbed, a grown man gets his throat split. So it goes, killing those who try to restrain her; they are no match for Red. She isn't Natalia anymore, that's a name ffor the good in her, and that part is dead. Red is awake and active, and she will have blood. 

Natalia screams out from a secluded corner of her head, but Red pays her no mind. Tonight, there will be death.


End file.
